Posted by blackhawk Fallout isn't stationary.

A few things:

The Green Zone has been repeatedly swept, and is in fact slated for rehabitation in the near future. Further exams are focused more on the infrastructure safety due to the prolonged neglect of the area.

Fallout is stationary. After a nuclear event (be it a meltdown or explosion), nuclear material is released into the environment in the form of radioactive dust - when you're dealing with radiation-contaminated water, it's not the water itself (H20) that's radioactive, it's the cesium in the water. This dust will spread around and downwind of the event site over the course of anywhere between a few days and several weeks, depending on the size of the event and the weather - rain will transport radioactive material, but ultimately brings down the radioactive dust quicker, compared to arid environments where the dust remains aloft longer/farther.

After the dust settles, while there's some risk of it being sent aloft again (especially in dry environments), it is for the most part stationary. Dust that falls onto dirt is absorbed into the soil and absorbed by plants along with water. Dust that falls onto roads and sidewalks stays there and is less vulnerable to being washed away by further weather conditions; for this reason, roads and stone structures will carry significantly higher risks of being radiation hotspots compared to wooden structures or natural areas.

Given that Fukushima was not a nuclear blast, and rather a release of nuclear materials, the buildings surrounding the site are for the most part intact, and relatively little amount of dust was released into the atmosphere - compared to a nuclear event, that is, where the blast itself produces a large quantity of nuclear material and the ensuing firestorm creates more and spread the dust further. As a result, the interior of buildings are relatively safe - for anything inside to be contaminated, radioactive dust would have to get into the building first. Take a look at old 50s buildings that still have their Fallout Shelter signs - interior rooms with no windows, and no worries of dust.

That's not to say that the Red Zone isn't dangerous, and that materials inside the Red Zone aren't at risk of being contaminated - quite the contrary, in fact, everything inside that area should be considered dangerously radioactive until considered otherwise; just because it's unlikely that dust gets into the buildings doesn't mean it can't, or hasn't. However, what I'm getting at is to nip the idea that radioactive zones are somehow mobile in the bud. The hotspots at this point are relatively well established (allowing for safe traversal of the Red Zone by trained guides), in fact.

Source: USN buddy of mine is a nuclear engineer, helped consult around the time they were drawing up protocols for containment and safety. He will, and does, talk my ear off about all the common misconceptions about radioactive safety.

While the majority of fallout settles out after days/weeks, dust can blow and a mile isn't far in that respect. 50 grams of plutonium dust is a huge amount and it's here and there...
The Plutonium dust is extremely fine and radioactive. There is at least one lab at Los Alamos that is still sealed after over 70 years because of a plutonium accident to spite the metal's value.

Hot spots can be anywhere and other unknown vectors of travel may be at work. Like dumb ass looters...

Furthermore a nuclear meltdown has the potential to release far more and longer lived radioactive fallout. There's a huge amount of radioactive material which went super critical in a runaway nuclear excursion, but unlike a nuclear bomb which consumes most of its radioactive core during the blast, almost all of the reactor fuel is still here... and there.

A meltdown like this is far harder to clean up than the blast zones of Hiroshima or Nagasaki and in fact its hot zones are far more radioactive now then either of those cities were just days after the blast. That includes ground zero at the blast sites. Try walking ground zero at the wasted reactor, even robots can't withstand the radiation.

There's no comparison between the two... a nuclear bomb detonation would have been far easier to clean up, left far less radioactive residues, as well as far less long lived radioactive isotopes.

Have people snuck past the Chernobyl exclusion zone? I'm sure after all these years, it should be relatively safe if you avoid the radiation dense zones of the area.

Posted by kasperatl Have people snuck past the Chernobyl exclusion zone? I'm sure after all these years, it should be relatively safe if you avoid the radiation dense zones of the area.

Sneaking in means you have no reliable intel of the hot zones. Or the needed safety protocols and equipment.
It's far from "safe".
Looters have been going in for years.
Time will tell... who got away with it.

Posted by kasperatl Have people snuck past the Chernobyl exclusion zone? I'm sure after all these years, it should be relatively safe if you avoid the radiation dense zones of the area.

You don't need to sneak in.

Various tour operators can now take you right the way into the undamaged parts of the nuclear power station that had the reactor meltdown, and have been doing tours around Pripyat and the surrounding towns evacuated after the disaster for years.

Provided you stay out of the undergrowth which still can contain pretty high levels of radiation at ground level, a day spent in the city of Pripyat and the 'zone' will expose you to no higher dose of radiation than you would receive on a flight to New York from the UK and back.